RIDGEFIELD -- Officials with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have given the green light for an accelerated approval process for an antidote under development by Boehringer Ingelheim for the blood thinning agent Pradaxa.

The FDA announced this week that idarucizumab, a drug that's been shown in preliminary trails to reverse the effects of Pradaxa, was granted a Breakthrough Therapy Designation to help expedite the development of the drug.

Concerns over whether the pharmaceutical company failed to properly warn patients of the risks in taking Pradaxa, including potentially fatal bleeding episodes, were at the heart of numerous state and federal lawsuits. Boehringer Ingelheim announced a $650 million settlement of the lawsuits late last month.

Despite the settlement, company officials continue to stand by the drug, which was approved in 2010 to reduce the risk of strokes in patients with irregular heartbeats.

"Boehringer Ingelheim is pleased that the FDA has granted Breakthrough Therapy Designation for idarucizumab to help expedite its development," Dr. Sabine Luik, senior vice president, Medicine & Regulatory Affairs for Boehringer Ingelheim, said in a statement released Thursday. "We continue to investigate the potential of idarucizumab as a therapeutic option should a patient experience uncontrolled bleeding or need to undergo emergency surgery or another invasive procedure."

Mikal Watts, the co-lead counsel for all the plaintiffs in the Pradaxa lawsuit, praised the company at the time for coming to a settlement rather than dragging the cases through the courts for the next few years.

"Instead, they sat down and negotiated a fair resolution," he said.

Officials with the drug company said a phase I study completed last year showed that idarucizumab was able to achieve immediate, complete and sustained reversal of dabigatran induced anticoagulants in healthy humans. The company said its actively enrolling sites in Europe for the study, although no sites in the United States have as yet been initiated.